The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's well-known reference to King Alfred's plan for a new design of war-ships is problematic both in general and in detail. In the account of the year 897 (recte 896), we are told how, after the raids made along the coast of Wessex by Danish gangs based in East Anglia and Northumbria, and in particular with raiding-vessels (OE œscas, ON askar) which they had built ‘many years before’, Alfred ordered ships of a new type to be constructed to meet the Danish menace. In the near-contemporary Winchester manuscript (A) the critical passage reads:

Þa het Ælfred cyng timbran langscipu ongen ða æscas. Þa wæron fulneah tu swa lange swa Þa oðru. Sume hæfdon lx ara, sume ma. Þa wæron ægðer ge swiftran ge unwealtran ge eac hieran Þonne pa oðru; næron nawðer ne on fresisc gescæpene ne on denisc, bute swa him selfum ðuhte Þæt hie nytwyrðoste beon meahten.

The Thorkelin transcripts of Beowulf (Copenhagen, Royal Library, N.K.S. 512 and 513 4°) are useful for a number of purposes. Two of these involve Beowulf itself: they offer a number of readings lost from its unique manuscript (London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A. xv) and they afford an insight into the genesis of its first printed edition (Thorkelin's) published, after many vicissitudes, in Copenhagen in 1815. For reasons that will become clear, these purposes should be kept well apart. The present study, accordingly, will concern itself with the first of them only, and will investigate the contribution made by the two transcripts to our knowledge of the manuscript as it was at two points of time in 1787 (more than half a century after the fire of 1731) when the two transcripts purport to have been made. With respect to the second transcript, Thorkelin B, for the most part a line-for-line and page-for-page copy written by Thorkelin himself in his English copperplate hand, this date has been queried, but no satisfactory evidence has been produced and it is not evident where any can now be found. As the dates appear, however, to have been recorded at least a quarter-century after the event, they need not necessarily be trusted wholly in either case. It is certain that in adding the date 1787 to another transcript Thorkelin was a year out; it may thus merely represent a memory of an intensive spell of copying. We shall see below that the first transcript, Thorkelin A, made by an amanuensis in an imitation of the manuscript's Insular script, suggests that there may not have been so very much time between it and Thorkelin B.

The Old English Descent into Hell fits uneasily into the poetic corpus remaining to us from Anglo-Saxon England. The poem is an oddity both thematically and genetically, and (insofar as it has attracted any attention at all) the history of its criticism has been an unrewarding search for sources. The Descent presents a sourcing problem at its most basic, for its parts are so disparate that it is difficult even to construct a horizon of expectations from which to read the work. I hope to suggest here a new analogue, as well as a new way of thinking about sources and analogues in Old English literary studies, that may prove fruitful. The more rewarding context for comparative study of the Descent into Hell is not textual, but pictorial; I argue that visual exegesis of the psalms reveals both the source and the nature of the connection between the poem's two primary topics. In particular, iconography derived from the enormously influential Utrecht Psalter (Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, 32) provides a structural model, if not for the composition of the text in the most direct sense, then certainly for both medieval and modern understanding of it.

Anti-Judaism existed in Anglo-Saxon England without the presence of actual Jewish communities. The understanding of Jews and Judaism in Anglo-Saxon England is therefore solely a textual phenomenon, a matter of stereotypes embedded in longstanding Christian cultural traditions. For instance, consider the homily De populo Israhel (written between 1002 and 1005), a condensation and translation of selections from Exodus and Numbers by the prolific monk Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 955–c. 1020). The text narrates the tribulations of the Israelites in the desert: Ælfric explains that although God ‘worhte feala wundra on ðam westene’, the Israelites were ‘wiðerræde witodlice to oft’ and angered him. The intractable attitude of God's chosen people in the desert demands an explanation; why did the Israelites spurn the heaven-sent manna and long for the repasts of their Egyptian captivity? Ælfric clarifies their behaviour through a string of typological associations. He explains that the manna ‘hæfde Þa getacnunge ures Hælendes Cristes’.

Modern scholars can sometimes reconstruct the methods of medieval glossary-makers by tracking individual glosses along the path from the textual source to the final destination in the glossarial list. Here I wish to pursue a trail of clues through two early-eleventh-century manuscripts of the Excerptiones de Prisciano (‘Excerpts of Priscian’), a Latin grammatical treatise which has been identified as the source for Ælfric's bilingual Grammar. Viewed singly, the manuscripts of this work offer partial views of glossatorial activity; viewed together, these fragmentary glimpses snap into perspective, rendering a dynamic picture of glossary-making as a corporate enterprise undertaken by a group of Anglo-Saxon schoolmen working in several manuscripts simultaneously.

The Old English prose Genesis contains a series of innovative rubrics, unparalleled in the Vulgate tradition, which divide the story of Genesis into a series of holy biographies of the patriarchs Noah, Abraham and Joseph. These rubrics, added to the text in the eleventh century, use formulaic language derived from contemporary documents such as Anglo-Saxon wills and thereby regulate how Genesis was to be read and interpreted by an aristocratic layman or novice monk. The rubrics blend ancient Hebrew narratives, stories of the saints and the legal conventions familiar to the reader in order to portray ‘sacred history’ as an unbroken, legally sanctioned inheritance. They emphasize the Covenant of God with Abraham and the people of Israel and assure the contemporary reader that he too will inherit an unfulfilled promise manifested in God's covenant with the patriarchs.

Farað witodlice and Iærað ealle þeoda and fulligeaþ hig on naman fæder and suna and þæs halgan gastes, and lærað þæt hig healdon ealle þa ðing þe ic eow behead (Matt. XXVIII.19–20).

With these words at the end of the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus sends out his disciples to spread the words and deeds of the Lord to all peoples. With respect to the Anglo-Saxons, this order was impressively executed by the earliest translation of the Vulgate gospels into a vernacular, the West Saxon Gospels (WSG). This text, from the late tenth or early eleventh century, survives in four complete manuscripts (A, B, C, Cp) and two fragments (F, L) from the Old English period and two complete manuscripts from the late twelfth century (R and its copy H).

The Paris Psalter (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 8824) has attracted much interest because of its long, thin format, its illustrations in the Utrecht Psalter tradition and its Old English prose translation of the first fifty psalms, which has been convincingly attributed to King Alfred himself. It is a bilingual psalter, with Latin (Roman version) on the left and Old English on the right. The first fifty psalms are in the prose translation connected with King Alfred, the remainder in a metrical version made by an author whose work has not been identified elsewhere. The leaves are approximately 526 × 186 mm, with a writing space of about 420 × 95 mm. It has been estimated that there were originally 200 leaves in twenty-five quires, but fourteen leaves, including those carrying all the major decoration, have been removed. There remain thirteen outline drawings integrated into the text on the first six folios. Some drawings may have functioned as ‘fillers’ where the Latin text was shorter than the Old English. Further on in the manuscript, in order to solve this problem, the scribe either left gaps or made the columns of Latin thinner than the corresponding Old English ones. The Old English introductions were set out across both columns, suggesting that the book was made for someone who read English more easily than Latin. The manuscript was written around the middle of the eleventh century, and it is clearly the work of a single skilled scribe who used a neat Anglo-Caroline minuscule for the Latin texts, and matching English vernacular minuscule with many Caroline letter forms for the Old English. Unfortunately, his hand has not been identified in any other books or charters; however, he did record in a colophon (186r; see pl.V) that he was called Wulfwinus cognomento Cada.

The main part of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 296, consists of a psalter (9r–105v), together with the usual accompaniments of calendar (1r–6v), tables (7r–8r), canticles (105v–116v), litany (117r–119v) and prayers (119v–127v). The main part of the manuscript, written by a single scribe, ends halfway down 127v, in the centre of a gathering of six folios. The lower part of 127v and the remaining three folios are taken up by an Office of the Trinity, written by a different scribe. The manuscript is attributed to Crowland on the basis of entries in the calendar and litany. Guthlac's name is entered in capitals in the litany, as are those of SS Mary and Peter; more importantly, Guthlac, like Peter, is invoked twice, a distinction accorded to no other saint in the Douce manuscript. The entries in the calendar include the translation of St Guthlac on 30 August, and a feast of his sister, St Pega, on 8 January, in addition to the usual feast of St Guthlac on 11 April; Pega also occurs, uniquely, in the litany of the Douce manuscript. The Psalter had probably left Crowland by 1091 when most of the monastery, including its library and service books, was destroyed by fire. By the early twelfth century it was in the possession of the Cluniac priory of St Paneras, Lewes, when the obits of Lanzo, prior of St Pancras (ob. 1 April 1107), Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury (ob. 21 April 1109) and Hugh, abbot of Cluny (ob. 29 April 1109) were entered on 2v. It is possible that the book was in female hands between leaving Crowland and arriving at Lewes, since the prayers at Lauds in the Office of the Trinity contain feminine forms.

Hereward ‘the Wake’ is renowned as one of the leaders of the English resistance to the Normans in the late 1060s and early 1070s. His involvement in the resistance is noted by all main sources, even though the extent to which he was responsible for actions in Ely and Peterborough remains to be elucidated. He is listed as a pre-Conquest Lincolnshire landholder and tenant in Domesday Book, which is the only contemporary source to mention, but not date, his outlawry. Hereward's career as an outlaw is shrouded in mystery, due to the lack of detail in contemporary sources and also to the rise of stories incorporated in the Gesta Herewardi (The Deeds of Hereward), written in the twelfth century, which claim that he went as a mercenary to Cornwall, Ireland and Flanders. Two sections of the Gesta Herewardi are devoted to his exploits in the county of Flanders, and there is a curious third passage describing his relationship to Gilbert of Gent, the richest post-Conquest Flemish settler in England, who is said to have been Hereward's godfather. The purpose of this article is to take a fresh look at these passages and to assess them in the light of sources written on the Continent which seemingly confirm the Gesta sections on Flanders.

King Alfred the Great has long been regarded as the archetypal symbol of the nation's perception of itself. Beset throughout his reign with the reality or threat of Viking invasions, Alfred battled fiercely and suffered heroically in leading his people to their eventual victory; at the same time he promoted the causes of religion and learning, and by the example of his government upheld truth, justice and the Anglo-Saxon way. Moreover, although himself fundamentally English (with West Saxon parents and a Mercian wife), he stood for a combination of political interests which made it easier to pass him off as prototypically British. Certainly he has done well, over the years, from the processes which turn history into legend. It may have taken a while for the cult to get going; but once up and running, the bandwagon could not be stopped. My purpose in reviewing the development of the cult of King Alfred is to explore the variety of factors which in their different ways contributed to the process from the ninth century to the present day, and to show how Alfredophilia, and latterly Alfredomania, found expression not only in religious, legal, political and historical writing, but also in much else besides. The overdy ‘literary’ manifestations of the cult of King Alfred, in poetry, drama, music, and prose, are not unfamiliar; yet they must be taken in connection with manifestations of the cult of King Alfred in sculpture, painting, engraving, and book-illustration, and all placed in whatever contexts may be appropriate, if we are to understand how the image of the king was formed and then transmitted to the next generation.